On immigration, House offers nothing

As America watches with a pained expression, Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives this week are wrestling with themselves over what to do about immigration reform.

Boxed into a corner (or perhaps, "fenced in" is more appropriate) by two-thirds of the U.S. Senate and three-fourths of the American public who support the Senate's plan for comprehensive reform, House GOP lawmakers seem desperate, though defiant as ever.

Speaker John Boehner has said the Senate bill will never be introduced on the House floor. This, despite the bill's requirements for a rigorous path to citizenship for 11 million people currently living in the U.S. illegally and despite the extraordinary measures incorporated into the bill to ensure that the nation's southern border and its ports are sealed against illegal entry or exit.

On other issues, representatives might simply choose to do nothing. But immigration has become the issue that could split the Republican Party asunder. So on Wednesday, the House Republican Conference met to discuss Republicans' next move: Will it be proposing their own version of the immigration reform bill? It wouldn't be the first; the House passed a conservative measure just a couple of months ago that was virtually ignored. And the Corker-Hoeven amendment to the Senate bill outdid that bill with billions of dollars for border security.

Former President George W. Bush in remarks tried to nudge the House toward adopting comprehensive reform, but the entrenched conservatives, including virtually every GOP representative from Tennessee, continue to rail against "amnesty" - although that word has lost its meaning for the Senate plan, under which few, if any, will achieve citizenship in less than 13 years, and none will avoid fines or receiving English language and American history instruction.

The conundrum for conservative lawmakers is that they must appear to have a workable alternative to the Senate bill, even though they really have only one idea: Deport.

And that simply is unrealistic, unfair and unacceptable to the overwhelming majority of Americans.

It's sad to see this obstinacy, this brain freeze by lawmakers who owe their livelihoods, their perks and their lifetime benefits to their reform-minded constituents. This goes for Reps. Marsha Blackburn, Diane Black, Scott DesJarlais, Stephen Fincher, Phil Roe and Chuck Fleischmann.

They owe it to voters at home to be open, for once, to compromise and to accept that on this issue, they might be wrong.

Our House delegation could learn a few things from our senators, Lamar Alexander and Bob Corker, about leadership.

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On immigration, House offers nothing

As America watches with a pained expression, Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives this week are wrestling with themselves over what to do about immigration reform.